AZ2 Bounty 4: Necrotic Focus

This is the fourth bounty for AZ2 PvE theorycrafting. For the next 30 days, the focus will be Necrotic. Submission deadline will be Tuesday, July 25, 2017 @ 11:59pm ET.

I am offering a 1400 platinum bounty for each class setup that receives the most acclaim by your peers by the end of the 30 days. In other words 1400 platinum each for the chosen deck for Cleric, Mage, Warrior, and Ranger. That's 5600 platinum up for grabs! (Unfortunately I can't go higher than this currently on my own if I want to sustain this for the months to come.)

The budget of your deck is not an issue. Your goal is to make the best overall deck for each class. I understand that some encounters in the campaign will require whole new builds but the goal is to create a general optimized setup for each class that players can work towards as they climb to the current cap of Level 15.

Note: If there are any changes to be made to the bounty, I will update here ASAP.

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Requirements:

Champion must be at Level 15.

The race must be Necrotic.

One class per post.

If you have multiple decks, submit only your best deck for that class.

You may submit one deck per class.

Edit your posts as necessary and make note of the changes in your update.

Last edit time must be prior to deadline.

Please follow Submission Format.

The main three goals of your deck should be and I hope the community will judge the decks based on these factors:

Consistency (how consistent is it?)

Flexibility (how well can it handle the majority of encounters?)

Speed (how quickly can it end the average encounter?)

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Submission Format:

Class: <Class>

Talents:

List

in

Bullets

Decklist:

Resources:

List

in

Bullets

Troops:

List

in

Bullets

Actions:

List

in

Bullets

Constants:

List

in

Bullets

Artifacts:

List

in

Bullets

Equipment:

List

in

Bullets

Mercenaries:

List

in

Bullets

Details: <Explanation of strategy and usage of deck including potential substitutions (if available).>

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Prizes:

Best Build of Cleric: 1400 platinum
Best Build of Mage: 1400 platinum
Best Build of Warrior: 1400 platinum
Best Build of Ranger: 1400 platinum

It is a bit of an odd time to post this with the upcoming set release, but I'm looking forward to theorycrafting with frostheart. Hopefully we can get humans next!! (hint hint)

Gonna reserve this post for my necrotic cleric.

Class: Cleric

Talents:

Enhance Blessing: Life essence

Hale

Healing Aura

Good Karma

Aura Aspect: Animation

The Righteous Path

Faith in our Leader

Loyal to our Leader

Diligent Study

Ample Supplies

Decklist:

Resources:

-38 blood shards

4 blood ice

4 sapphire ice

4 ruby ice

4 wild ice

4 diamond ice

Troops:

1 Sepulchra Maggot

Actions:

None

Constants:

1 Hideous Conversion

Artifacts:

None

Equipment:

Sepulchra Scarab

Sepulchra Stone Sludge

Mercenaries:

Gax, the Sly Roller

Zurxathil

Salty Sam

Details:

This deck is very simple to play. All you need is at least 2 fateweave shards with a blood threshold or one fateweave shard, one combo piece and a blood threshold. This setup with the mercenaries allows you to go infinite with sepulchra maggots as early as turn 2. Do try to play your maggots around the AI's quick removal though, as if they use a burn on it it will shut this deck down. This deck allows for quick infinite combos that are easy to pull off.

He's just continuing the trend of starting the new one as soon as the old one ends. Timing wise its fine though - wait a week or two, see all the new options we have, and then a bunch of brand new decks get posted early in the set's lifespan.

Gem changes will change my submission a lot in a few weeks.... but in a few weeks I won't have time to make a submission, so might have to YOLO this one - Some new gems make for some better changes anyway

One question, since I never played necrotic in the campaign. How are multi-colored cards restricted? For example Daarmak, I see you can only play 1 wild legendary card, does that mean you can only play 1 daarmak?

One question, since I never played necrotic in the campaign. How are multi-colored cards restricted? For example Daarmak, I see you can only play 1 wild legendary card, does that mean you can only play 1 daarmak?

Reserved for possible decklist as well.

For the respective rarity, it is the shard with the least amount that you could take. For example say for rares we had 2 ruby and 3 diamond. For a diamond ruby rare, you could include two of them.

Affinity: Cleric.- Clerics that begin the game in your deck get Lifedrain.

Almost all of our troops are Clerics except for Ethereal Healers and thus, they benefit 100% from having Lifedrain.

Unlock: Divine Altar

Divine Altar.- When you play a Blessing, copy it. When you play a Cleric, summon a copy of it.
If you can play this card as early as possible, then the value you will get from it it's insane. Multiple Righteous Paladin or multiple Paladin of the Necropolis win the game on the spot combined with Monument of Faith and a free blessing when you play one.

Premonitions.- Look at three random cards in your deck. Put one of them on top of your deck, then put the remaining cards into your deck.

A must get talent. The ability to modify your next draw is really good regardless of the situation. You may be looking to get a second Diamond Shard to play Righteous Paladin on turn 2 or just a regular shard. Maybe you need a Blessing or a 3 drop depending on your starting hand.

Gameplay

This deck is pretty straitghtforward: Play your minions on curve and attack whenever you can. Simple as that. Since all your troops have Steadfast you don't have to worry about backswings. The great synergy between all the clerics is enough to build a powerful board early on and be able to beat every single encounter.
Try to start the game by playing 1 Diamond Shard to start procking Ethereal Healer. Even the first shard played has a chance to put Healers in play.

Replacements and Tech Cards

With the arrival of AZ2, Casualty of War with its equipment became a staple in every blood deck since it can kill and weak Gnolls, Minotaurs, Beasts, Fish, Insects, etc. When doing AZ1 I recommend swapping them for 3 Decree of Banishing to deal with pesky Ardent/Underworld troops. When removing the Casualties, you need to remove also its equipment and replace it for the trinket Sigil of Grace.

Well of Retribution can always be swapped for its cheaper alternative: Shard of Retribution.

Cerebral Jack-hat has become the option to go for drawing cards, specially with its chest equipment which allows to draw 2 cards per turn (then discarding one). A replacement option is Deployment Orders since you will have enough troops to play it for 0 resources.

¡New Cards!

I included x3 Guidance because I think they're good 1 resource cantrips and the Fateweave mechanic allows you to modifiy your next draw which it's amazing if you need resources or you're flooded.

With the realease of Frostheart we were able to check the equipment of the new PVE cards. Devout Crusader gloves equipment gives all Clerics +1/+1 whenever you gain health so it's a really good addition to the deck. I removed the Grim Harvester for them because they never felt like a good fit. Most of the time you didn't want to sacrifice another troop just to proc Mesa Totemist, it was nice but not that good.

Have you ever set a rat on fire? No, wait, don't answer this; you never know who's lurking on these forums. What we're gonna do here, we're going to make it a thought experiment, as if we suddenly had an urge to burn a rat, purely hypotetically.

So, why would we want (hypothetically) to burn a rat? Because the rat in question is unique (pun not intended) in terms of its abilities, mainly because of the Deathcry that puts it back into play. This effect means that we can seriously consider cards that will make good use of this ability: sacrifice, damage to your own troops etc. That's why the deck is essentially divided into two packages: a Pet Package, familiar to anyone accustomed to the Big spider, and a Pyre Package (or Kamikaze package, as I call it), unique to this particular combination of race and class.

Pet Package core actions are fairly standard: Seeing Red and Glyph of Hatred for permanent buffs, Blitz for burst. Seeing how the Rat isn't unblockable, I needed to make some room for utility cards to make damage go through, so there is also an assortment of Crush and Unblockable buffs. Whilst Crushing Blow speaks for itself, I believe that Touch of Xentoth and Acolyte of Xentoth require some additional explanation:
a) Unblockable vs Crush. Originally, I was running Stink Trolls and Runic Fury in these slots. Runic Fury, for one, seem like everything this deck wants as it gives a hefty amount of attack and repeats with a resource. Then I realized that with games ending on turns 3-4 I simply cannot afford to waste a whole turn casting something that may or may not be useful. Touch of Xentoth, for example, lets you cast itself on turn 3 with 1 resource point remaining for something else, be it buff or shift, all the while leaving behind an unblockable troop.
b) Xentoth vs Skulk of the Wastes. Skulk seems a fair card, but I really don't like it for this deck. First of all, it's a 3-drop. Second, it actually debuffs your main threat. Sure, it's the price of a permanent Unblockable buff, but you likely won't have the time to benefit from it, because matches tend to end rather quickly.

And, quite frankly, I like that Touch of Xentoth provides some additional utility in spiders. It is negligible, and after many hours of testing I am yet to run into a single spider, but the possibility is there, and it feels good.

And now the fun part begins.

Pyre Package is one of the most fun things I've hypothetically had with Ranger pets in the game.
It all begins with a Soul Siphoner, who has a very powerful shift: "Deathcry - Each opposing champion loses health equal to this troop's power". Do you feel that great disturbance, as if millions of AI opponents cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced? The ability, obviously, goes on the rat, because the rat can die twice to trigger it. Soul Siphoner is our Holy Activator and the gateway to hilarity.

Interaction 1: Soul of Battle. If you cast Soul of Battle on your pet, it will die once at the end of turn and will keep both Crush and double damage. Please note that double damage doesn't affect Siphoner's buff, which states 'loses health' as opposed to 'deals damage'.

Interaction 2: Spontaneous Combustion. It's exactly what it seems to be: you kill your pet and deal damage equal to its attack to a champion, also triggering Siphoner's buff.

Interaction 3: Fire with Fire. This here is the nuclear bomb of the build. Casting Fire with Fire makes your pet immediately trigger its Siphoner's buff three times with fourth time being at the end of turn, effectively making your opponent lose 4*(your pet's attack) in health. The more buffed is the pet, the more it will hurt. And, of course, nothing prevents you from swinging first and going off post-combat, thus adding serious injury to insult.

This stuff is very consistent and provides an array of finisher options.

The rest is utility. Sneakblade is a solid 1-drop that only gets better with Glyph of Hatred. Kindling Skarn is mostly a filler card which sometimes can provide some advantage in terms of useful spells and can go off by itself if you have enough cheap spells. Voltwrench is a 2-cost artifact that helps buffing your pet in case of a match being unexpectedly stalled.

Deck Support

Equipment is mostly in a good spot, except for gloves. I am currently running a safe option, but Skarn gloves might be superior to lifedrain, seeing how the champion usually doesn't have any problems with health. What's more, Siphoner's Spirit Depleters are also a contender for the spot, except that I haven't once seen them in the game.

Resource base is fairly simple. You don't want 0/1 shards (even if they Fateweave) because resource management in the first turns is very important. To lessen a chance of a terrible opening hand you also don't want a playset of Wells. You maybe don't even want to run 20 resources - honestly, between fetch and low curve you should be perfectly fine with 19 shards or maybe as low as 18.

Mercenaries are a combination of the standard I-Am-Going-Second Clatterclank and Katsuhiro package and Sekki (between Pet Treats and our own 0-cost cards the effect is rather consistent).

Talent build is spread between pet buffs, utility and health gain.

All in all, the deck feels fairly optimized for everything that is out there outside of obvious boogeymen (I am yet to run it against Mad Aradam, should be fun). Your usual goals are turn 3 or turn 4 kills. It can go faster, but it would require some shenanigans mostly revolving around Fertile Ground.

In the end, the main question you have to ask yourself while deciding if you want to play this deck is fairly simple:Do you want to set a rat on fire?

Tafford the tireless (because the health from the blessings passive can be a...uh... blessing?)

Details: Have not updated this deck much for set 7 so please let me know any suggested changes. I played this character through the whole campaign with strictly 5 shard decks because I feel Necrotic just deserve it. It isn't a fast deck but it is all about the 5 shard fun. Taking advantage of the necrotic racial to have both Destructive Magic and Protective Magic is lots of fun, then you start scheming them to fill your deck with OP cards. Cartomancy is new and is also a lot of fun to scheme. You will often have to set up with Lixil, Eye of Lixil, or a magic barrier to keep you alive early while you set up, but once you have an active life gain mechanic from a transformed gatherer, a midnight paladin which shepherd keeps bringing back or a high infinitrix the game is yours. Lots of mages included to make use of the Matriarch item and Wrenlock is there to help you draw your entire deck while you do it.

I've contemplated putting in permafrost to use on Darmaak but I don't own any and I'm not sure I could balance the shard base that way. If anyone has a suggestion as to how best to do this please let me know.

The post was edited 1 time, last by HouseOfBrick (Jul 15th 2017, 5:26am).

Armguards of Dread (Rot Sniper - this is basically irrelevant, but nothing else in this slot)

Sniper's Slippers (Rot Sniper)

Nulzann's Malicious Injector (Sentry of Nulzann)

Mercenaries:

Spirit of the Triumvirate (upgraded) - Better troops is cool

Dallad - Fateweave, why not

Xarhrax - Decreases chance of threshold screw slightly and increased the chance of an early Monarch

Details: The deck is obviously based on the PvP socket deck, but we just get to do so many cool things in PvE. Rot Sniper with equip is basically a rune ear hierophant. Emsee always gets to sac a troop on 2 because we start with a wall in play. Forgotten Monarch can be buffed by other effects like the Animus and can come into play as a Xocoy-like beatstick. Grim Skull Sorcerer, Spiritbound Vicar, Forgotten Monarch, and Animus of Nulzann all grow or make all of your troops larger as you play things. Gemborn Matron is a giant nuke to end the game if you can't get in with troops for some reason. Altar of Nulzann lets you scale and draw out most of your deck if the plan A beatdown doesnt work.

The Ranger's power lies in the sheer number of cards they can start with in play. The Necrotic's extra talent (to get to Improvised Bomb) and the self-resurrecting rat make this even more true.

The deck has explosive starts - either Pouch'ing or Foreman'ing the Toy, Dreadling, or Bomb that start in play or setting up a Sneakblade or Tusker for big hits starting on turn 2 from attack-boosting actions. Contract Kill can even burn your own Toy to provide extra mana, too.

The deck puts on pressure early and keeps it on the entire game. The undying rat and the free shard from hitting the opponent provide incredible consistency, making no-land starting hands allow turn 2 wins (thank you Tusker + Seeing Reds!). On the higher end of the curve, Hunger, Boltwing, and Blight Bestowed keep the deck punching through turns 3 and 4. Later games get closed out by a +Crush effect or stacking burn (with also boosts the Hungers).

The Necro extra talent adds Improvised Bomb to the suite of Ranged Expertise disruption and lets the Ranger's early threats be even more effective.

Spirit of the Triumvirate (upgraded) - combined with 'Trained' most of your troops will now have swiftstrike, and steadfast

Baxoth of Korru - 1 free dreadling at the start = Synergy!

Mother Beatrice - 4 actions gain illuminate 1 - more free 1/1 troops, and we can always hope it will land on Mawstorm for shenanigans

Details: Berserk-lings

This deck is primarily focused on taking advantage of berserk by hitting our opponents hard, quick, and with lots of little creatures. We augment the deck further by utilizing the following synergistic mechanics - Assault, Deploy, & Scrounge.

Substitution Options:

Consider trading out the 'Spectral Acorns' for 'Harvest of Sorrow' if you would like some serious draw power (a little slow at 3 cost)

Change equipment weapon to 'Sepulchra Stone Sledge' to give the maggots lethal and help clear out large threats

If you make this change, consider also switching out the trinket slot to 'Tablet of the Revenant' and the action 'Tomb Swap' to 'Call the Grave' so we can still play up to 9 cards from the top of our decks + nothing beats grabbing 5 copies of maggots or 20 dreadlings from the graveyard for 1 resource.

Fun stuff:

Playing 'Mawstorm' immediately after attacking with 4 or more troops (for FREE) sometimes even playing it multiple times

Dropping a Sepulchra Maggots at the end of your turn when you had 3 + dreadlings or after a field wipe from CPU (even from the top of your deck)

First Turn boiling blood often results in 3/1 resources or more.

Bitter Dread is a 0 cost replacement for Dread Driver that has only 1 threshold, can be played from the top of your deck, and often times creates a much stronger dreadling summoning troop.

Dormant One is pretty much a guaranteed Overkill

Special Notes:
**To take full advantage of the Sepulchra Maggots timing, be sure to enable the end of turn stop under turn order settings, or you will miss the timing between when your dreadlings sacrifice and your opponents turn starts.

NO LAY OF THE LAND as the card would disrupt you, at least te chew toys replace themselves.

Decklist: Deathseeker, Siphoner, Conversion, Combo

Resources: 56

36x Blood Shard

4 Blood Ice

4 Diamond Ice

4 Ruby Ice

4 Sapphire Ice

4 Wild Ice

Troops: 2

1 Deathseeker

1 Soul Siphoner

Actions: 0

Constants: 1

1 Hideous Conversion

Artifacts: 2

2x Spectral Acorn (happily ignored by fateweave)

Equipment:

None sorry.

Mercenaries:

Clatterclank - extra charges to regrow your rat in case you need to sacrifice it for scrounging

Baxoth of Korru - 1 free dreadling at the start for scrounging

The Dingler King - incase you get the free dingler to sacrifice for scrounge (not really necessary)

Details:

61 cards for clatterclank.

The idea is get 1 of each non-resource, no acorn card, play conversion and start sacrificing chew toys and rats, make sure you can scrounge deathseeker for 4 so it returns to your hand, play seeker and scrounge 4, play soul siphoner, shift the damage by attack ability, sacrifice deathseeker over and over dealing 2 damage per occurance until the oponent is dead.

The talents are set up to avoid putting non-resource cards in your deck and ensure you get your combo pieces.

There is a lot of clicking involved, but you can usually get the 3 pieces by turn 4, and whatever turn you get it you win. Turn 2 conversion sacc chew toy, sacc pet, sacc pet (so it goes to the crypt) play new pet and sacc twice again gives you all ther esources and scrounge you need (with baxoth's dreadling). as it is fairly non-interactive its success depends on your draws.

So far so good, but I'll run it a few more times and update the post regarding its consistency.

Edit: As long as you mulligan to get 3 fateweave shards or combo pieces you should be able to pull it off by turn 4 almost every game.

So I had a hard time figuring out a build that felt Necrotic for the Warrior that couldn't be done better by one of the other classes. The Mage with its card filtering and the Ranger with its Fetch ability are best for 5-color builds. A cleric benefits best from the life draining techniques. I had a hard time find a deck that really showcased the necrotic warrior abilities.

But then I started playing with the recent holiday card, Captured Flag, and I saw it's potential as the keystone card of an amusing sadomasochistic Necrotic Warrior Deck. Introducing my submission:

Knight of the Fallen Banner

Class: Warrior

Talents:

Affinity: Warriors

Adrenaline

Berserking

Boiling Blood

Warlord: Agility

Warlord: Parrying

Unlock: Warlord War Machine

Warrior Class Gems

Training: Combat

Reinforcements

Training: Deployment

Training: Tactics

Enhanced Training Regimen

Decklist:

Resources:

17 x Blood Shard

2 x Necropolis Coins

4 x Blood Ice

Troops:

3 x Fang of the Mountain God

2 x Adaptatron

3 x Hunger of the Mountain God

2 x Vampire Prince

3 x Claw of the Mountain God

3 x Paladin of the Necropolis

3 x Gemsoul Feeder

3 x Vampire Princess

2 x Vampire King

3 x Fury of the Mountain God (Socketed with both Warrior Class Gems)

Actions:

3 x Contract Killing

3 x Strangle

Artifacts:

1 x Spectral Acorn

3 x Captured Flag

Equipment:

Adaptive Helm (for Adaptatron)

Certificate of Receipt (for Contract Killing)

Cog of the Machine (for Adaptatron)

Phantasmal Grips (for Spectral Acorn)

Spore Ball Hightops (for Captured Flag)

Hungering Battle Axe (for Hunger of the Mountain God)

Mercenaries:

Sekki

Dallad

Puck

Details:

Deck Theme: Damaging yourself for Profit: This deck is all about hurting yourself and reaping the benefits. The source of the self-damage comes from the different Mountain Orcs (Fang, Claw, and Hunger of the Mountain God). You have several abilities that profit when you are damaged, and these orcs will constantly damage you each turn. This deck functions best when at least one of these is in your starting hand.

Shenanigans start with the ever growing Hunger of the God. This should be pretty self explanatory since it gets bigger every time a champion gets hurt. So all of the Mountain Orcs that damage you will make Hunger of the Mountain larger with each instance of damage. Similarly, Fang of the Mountiain God gets cheaper with every hit. It takes little time at all to get a Speedy 5/5 with Rage 5, Swiftstrike, and Steadfast. What gets more exciting is Captured Flag. When you damage the controller of Captured Flag, the source of the damage gets cards. If you just happen to become the controller of Captured Flag and you damage yourself, you get to draw cards and keep the flag. So even just an innocuous Fang of the Mountain God becomes a wonderful little one drop that allows you to draw 2 extra cards a turn and get a charge. Several Mountain Orcs in play with Captured Flag means you will pretty much draw your deck.

Charge Generation: And this is why the Necrotic Warrior Charge power is important. Since you are constantly damaging yourself, having an intrinsic way to get back health or destroy small bothersome troops that might steal the flag is key to making this deck work. And you will use your charge power almost constantly. From your talent, every Orc Warrior you play gives you a charge. From the Adrenaline talent, every time you are damaged, you might get you a charge. Captured Flag with equipment is an ever flowing source of charges. All told, you can sometimes can just close out the game simply by hitting the opponent repeatedly with your charge power.

Supporting cards for your sadomasochism: The rest of the deck revolves around lifedrain to help prevent you from dying from too much self damage. The Vampires are here to provide both evasion in case your opponent somehow has surviving ground forces as well as lifedrain to offset the self damage. Plus, a Trained Vampire is brutal. In addition, there are two ways of giving your troops lifedrain: Adaptatron and Gemsoul Feeder. Putting Lifedrain on any of the Mountain Orcs will mean you still get damaged from their abilities, but you instantly heal it back. Lastly, all this incidental life gain gives a whole bunch of triggers for Paladin of the Necropolis.

Mercenary Choice: The mercenaries don't have that big an impact on the deck and are really up to personal choice. I chose Sekki since there is a large enough chance to actually start with a zero cost card to draw an extra card and overcome the warriors biggest drawback. I chose Dallad to give the couple Necrotic in my deck a little bit of deck filtering. And I chose Puck to start making a Fury even cheaper. Plus, I like playing with the Puck deck I have.

Details: As i started my Necrotic Carrier i was thinking that necrotic Decks should use all 5 colours of course.
And the best Necrotic Class for that was Mage for me. His special Ability to steal cards from the enemies deck is so funny, that i tried to build a deck themed to necrotic but also play with cards from your oppenent.
If they have more might in their deck, you can stela more might
So there are a lot cards, that let you play with cards that you dont own normally (Zakkaz, Midnight Shepherd, Naagaan Lapidary, Mind Games and Mad Aradam Cultist, and of course your Race Mage ability).
Because we dont trivalize the tresholds everytime i built a 5 colour deck, than can very good go prismatic until turn 5 (sometimes even turn 3!).
Just be careful which treshold you got from Xarhrax, so you dont get it again with your primal Prism. The order of need for tresholds is Diamond-blood-saphire-ruby-wild.
There is no need for double tresholds, only if you get something from the oppenent perhaps!

The Rest of the deck is trying to use this prismatic as its best (the two Lixil cards, Midnight Gatherer + Paladin, Prodigy of Volosolov)
So you have a strong Army, nice tools to play oppenent cards and some good Evasion or Reach to close the game quickly even if the board is stalled.

The whole Mage talents are to help you stabilize your board the first few turns with for example chaotic missile vs the insect boss with much low defense flyers in kukatan and the second gnoll boss with two 4/1 at start in GmG. You can push their best card (CARD!, not only troop!) with Telekinesis back to the hand if it gets starting hard, or you rescue your own troop for removal. Or you just replay a lixil/Crusader/Paladin for their deploy effects!

Reap and Discombulate are in the deck for Problems, but i hardly need them
Most times my board stabilized quickly and growth fast to kill the enemie with only a few attacks!
Thanks to the Ice shards and the Buff form the Merc Dallad you have ful control of getting enough ressources.
And the Midnight Gatherer can get you ressources too, but most times you just attack with him once (because of the guardian golem he can even attack into flying blockers:)) and than transform it into a monster.
I think i played like 10 dungeons now with this deck and never had problems getting enough mana.
Instead i think i could cut 1 or two more for some other cool things, but no time left for trying:(

Oh, i think have to say that i always get two pieces for the robot in gmg (with every char, for extra gold ad easy mode with scutt)
the only piece i dont collect for him is from the gnoll with a lot of walls at the start of the game, that fight is stupid i think...

I really like this deck right now. its not a very fast farm deck, but its really consistent in at least the last two dungeons (i didnt tried kraken i have to say).

Dinglers are the best race on Entrath!

The post was edited 2 times, last by Amostephil (Jul 22nd 2017, 9:52am).

The Cleric can start with the incredible Healing Aura constant, which is further souped up by talents. The Necrotic's armor 1 at the start of the game buys it a fair bit of breathing room to get shenanigans going.

To start, Vesper, Radiant Phys set up a front-line of defense against smaller targets, while Decree and Solitary Confinement knock out the bigger targets. This early slowing is important to let the deck last until turns 5-7 where things start to get carried away.

There are a few elements to this deck that snowball quickly. The Bibliophile is the best example. Once it hits play, it is copying 1-3 of your best constants every turn... if this hits a Healing Aura before you've used your 1-Shot, this will start throwing out giant Soul Vessels, too. Twilight Eclipses grow very quickly at this point, too. Day Riders are particularly interesting given the deck's ability to cast (and recast in the case of Solitary Confinement) constants over and over again.

The real claim to fame of this deck is it's resilience through the mid- to late-game. Daybreak Diviner enables the rest of the deck with cheap constants. Death's Chant offers recursion for your best troops (which all grow over time thanks to your blessings, too). The hard-reset from Taste of Defeat can be extremely useful as either a controlling constant that forced them to sac a troop every turn *or* an immediate kill-all. Cerebral Jack-hat make sure that even if the game goes long, you'll always win out with card advantage. Even the Dormant Ones provide excellent defense (and extra punch) when you need it.

All-in-all it's a very consistent deck that shows off some of the cool new cards coming out of the Frost Ring Arena and Frostheart... before those sets came out, who ever thought Healing Aura could be so good?!

This deck is my take on an aggro-ish Cleric approach that utilizes Blessing to their fullest potential. To accomplish that, I took two of the most powerful action-oriented troops in the game and started building around them.

The principle is simple: you cast actions, troops get buffed, troops smash!

The troop package is fairly small: Kindling Skarns and Feralfuel Guzzlers as our main punching force, Cyclone Shapers and Archmage Wrenlocke as engines. Technically speaking, there are two more troops that fit into this theme - Embertongue Skarns and Eldritch Thunderbirds - but after a couple of test runs I'd decided to cut them out because they are usually too slow to matter. But, in case that you'll find that this build is lacking troops, Eldritch Thunderbirds are quite viable and the better ones of the two.

The idea behind the troop package is to buff our Skarns (even phase 2 should be enough) or equipped Feralfuel Guzzlers to the point of massive swing and then smash the opponent to bits by either evasion (Conceal/Ashahsa) or by brute force (Soul of Battle).

The action package, therefore, has three tasks before it:

Making troops go through. Achieved by a combination of Soul of Battles and Conceals;

Making things die. Crackling Bolts and Pyre Ceremonies see to that (the latest can be used as a sort of ramp if needed);

Making troops grow. Usually it is the trickiest part, because aggro decks usually tend to run out of cards. Gladly, it isn't the issue for this deck, because it has more trouble playing all the cards it gets as opposed to not having enough playables. Runic Upheaval and Runefusion see to that, and Fuel to the Fire is just a cherry on the top.

Action package is directly tied to the another side of the deck: blessings. Blessings in this deck - as opposed to the more popular builds - are good and powerful. Even more so when Blessings of the Immortals are concerned. That's why my talent tree is mostly left-sided with only three points on the right side. You want your blessings, you want them as soon as one of your key troops hits the board, and you want to chain them into each other with various benefits. So, most of the talents are pretty self-explanatory. However, there are some cases that might require an explanation of my choice:

Armor & Cleanse vs. Hale & Healing Aura. Both paths are only marginally relevant to the theme, so the choice here is mostly flavorful. If anything, Hale & Healing Aura should be slightly better because the matches are short, but I prefer the aesthetics of Armor: 2 and simplicity of the board in the absence of Healing Aura (and its activations) in play. This choice is also a consequence of another one:

Good Karma vs. Child of the Right Hand. Their names aside, both talents seem to be about equally useful. Good Karma moves our Blessings up with each passing turn, Child of the Right Hand gives us more cards in the beginning of the match. It is mostly a choice between consistency and potential, and so far I am liking CotRH a tiny bit more because we start with six blessings in out deck and have a decent chance of getting at least one in the opening hand.

That being said, I think that both these paths and choices are about equal in terms of effectiveness and most of the time won't affect the flow of the match. If you want to maximize your defenses, you can even run almost everything on the left side instead of Diligent Study (which might've deserved its own bullet point if the power behind Divine Altar and Study wasn't so self-explanatory and obvious).

The usual game plan is to wait until one of the troops gets into play and then start cycling to buff him as much as possible (in case of Skarns wait until phase 2) and then swing for the fences. Your usual kill clock is turn 4 / turn 5 with some exceptions that may go either way. Discounting actions is rather important, as is careful timing of your regular Blessings and Blessings of the Immortals.